Mofussilpore, Feb. 17.

Dear Simkins,–Before leaving Patna I ran over to Arrah, and spent an evening and morning in visiting the scene of the most complete episode of the great troubles. The collector entertained me very hospitably, and I passed the night in “The House” in a more unbroken repose than others of my countrymen have enjoyed in the same room. I was rather ashamed of having slept so well. Would a Spartan have slumbered soundly on the tomb of the Three Hundred?–or a Roman, think you, beneath what Niebuhr does not believe to be the sepulchre of the Horatii, with no thought “on those strong limbs” which, according to that acute and able scholar, do not “moulder deep below”? For Arrah is emphatically the Thermopylae of our race–hallowed, no less than those world-famed straits, by superhuman courage and by memorable disaster.

All the associations there are concentrated within a small well-defined locality, which vastly increases the emotion that they excite. It is this, even more than the importance of the conflict, which draws so many tourists to Hougoumont. There is the farm-yard gate which the assailants forced open, and which four English officers and a sergeant shut in their faces by dint of hard shoving.